Maisie’s Adventure with The Honest Kitchen

Published on October 10th, 2014

Maisie’s Adventure with The Honest Kitchen

Here’s a personal tale to make the point that even dogs with the “trickiest tummies” can eat The Honest Kitchen’s healthy foods if you give them the digestive support they need to eat the pet food that’s good enough for people to eat — “Made with Passion and Principles.”

All my dogs have always eaten THE HONEST KITCHEN foods, so I naturally assumed that would be the main diet of my new little Blue Weimaraner puppy (well not so little — she was already 58 lbs at 9 months!). I drove down from my home in Vermont to get Maisie from Mid-Atlantic Weimaraner Rescue in Virginia, bringing back a bag of the warehouse brand of kibble she had been eating while waiting to be adopted. The first thing I wanted to do was turn her into an Honest Kitchen pup. I strongly believe that nutrition is the cornerstone of health, and I know that the fresh, lightly processed, uncooked ingredients in The Honest Kitchen’s recipes are the answer to that aspect of a dog’s wellness. From the very first time (more than a decade ago) that I learned of Lucy Postins’ then brand new, astonishing, ground-breaking, raw, dehydrated, human-edible foods, I knew they would give me the pleasure and peace of mind that I was feeding a bowlful of good health to my dogs at every meal.

To my dismay, when I got home with Maisie she immediately confronted me with severe, frequent diarrhea as soon as I began to taper off the food she had been eating and introduced The Honest Kitchen and the kibble I use from Halo. I went right to the vet who did a fecal sample that showed Maisie did have giardia (it had been a very wet spring down in Virginia, although her digestion had been normal there eating the warehouse brand of food). We treated the giardia but the diarrhea didn’t resolve. We did a worming for good measure and a course of probiotics, but Maisie’s digestion was still a disaster (I chronicled the whole messy story on my blog at RadioPetLady.com). My vet wanted me to start using a prescription dog food for IBD (until she saw steam come out of my ears as I vented about the miserable ingredients in those foods) and she thought I was nuts to insist on wanting Maisie to eat The Honest Kitchen when the pup had such drastic digestion challenges. I was facing “puddles of poo” but I was determined to find a way to feed this girl the “good stuff.”

I turned to my co-host Dr. Donna Spector on THE EXPERT VET radio show and we ran a SPOT Platinum blood allergy test that looks for allergies to 90 elements in a dog’s environment, as well as foods — but Maisie showed no significant reactions. Dr. Donna diagnosed Maisie as having Fiber Responsive Diarrhea (FRD), fairly common in young large breed dogs, and she prescribed a mixture of Fiber One cereal (highest fiber of any cereal out there!) and psyllium husk powder to add to every meal. Dr. Donna totally understood my determination to get Maisie’s body able to handle high quality food and constructed a very strict careful diet program that would increase The Honest Kitchen over a four week calendar, but allowed only ¼ cup of The Honest Kitchen at each meal (added to my brand of super premium kibble that happened to have a very high level of good quality fiber in it, too). The plan was for Maisie to adjust very slowly as I regulated the amount of cereal and psyllium husk I added to each meal to slow down her digestion and prevent the diarrhea.

Maisie loved the Honest Kitchen food — no surprise! — and I was champing at the bit, hoping to be giving her a lot more of it within a month. I didn’t think anything twice when the delivery truck dropped off my usual order of a big box from The Honest Kitchen that had four of their large boxes of food packed inside. I left it on the porch to unpack after I finished some deadlines I had to record radio shows (The Honest Kitchen is actually a sponsor of my show HOLISTIC VETS with Dr. Patrick Mahaney, who happens to work directly with The Honest Kitchen!). When I realized that night had fallen and the house was unusually quiet — no Maisie leaping about, with the double flap of the dog door flapping open and shut as she came and went on urgent missions of squirrel and twig chasing — I went to see where she had gotten to.

Imagine my surprise to open the door to the porch and find that my nutritionally challenged young lady had decided she was sick of waiting for a proper portion of The Honest Kitchen so she had taken matters into her own hands! As the accompanying photo will show, first she ripped open the outside cardboard box, then she gnawed at the corner of one of the Honest Kitchen cardboard boxes, and then she ripped open the sealed inner plastic bag (the one I need a scissors to open!) After that she stuck her head right into that bright green dehydrated food smorgasbord and went to town! She was quite a sight and looked way too pleased with herself for me to do anything but laugh.

Of course all foods from The Honest Kitchen are meant to be re-hydrated with warm water before you serve them, so while Maisie’s idea of self-service was not the optimal way to eat the food, she did the re-hydrating for herself over the next couple of hours, depositing green debris in all the watering bowls. The most wonderful part was that Maisie’s digestion was in no way impaired by this sudden introduction of raw high quality meat, fruits and vegetables. I abandoned the slow and steady month-long diet plan and went right to giving her a big scoop of The Honest Kitchen as the main course in every meal, making sure there is always that fiber cereal and psyllium. So if anyone worries about whether their dog’s digestive system can “handle” The Honest Kitchen, rest assured that once you have ruled out any medical conditions there is no reason every dog cannot enjoy the multiple benefits of the food Maisie simply could not wait to dig into!

–Tracie Hotchner

The Honest Kitchen is a sponsor on Radio Pet Lady Network, by our invitation.